Council tax, school meal fees and garden waste collection charges are set to rise in Newcastle, after local authority officials announced more than £21 million of cuts.
Newcastle City Council has warned that it is facing “tough decisions” to balance its books amid mounting financial pressures as a result of inflation and spiralling demand for social care services.
Civic centre finance chiefs have confirmed that they expect to have to make savings totalling £62.8 million by 2028, having already slashed £381 million from their budgets over the past 15 years.
Details of the first £21.3 million of those cuts, to be made in the 2025/26 financial year, emerged on Thursday.
They include a 4.99% council tax rise from next April, with the authority pledging to pump the extra £9.2 million raised back into its frontline services.
The increase will equate to £67.04 per year for Band A households, £100.55 for people in Band D properties, and £201.10 for the most expensive Band H.
Garden waste collection charges are due to increase by £2 next year and £1 annually thereafter, under the plans due to be presented to the council’s Labour cabinet next week before a five-week public consultation begins.
The council also proposes charging a flat £3 rate for each school dinner it provides, having warned recently that the service was at “genuine risk” due to increasing food and staffing costs, to generate a further £621,000.
Those fees are paid to the council by schools, who have discretion to decide what charge per meal is passed onto parents – though the council admits that households with low incomes, but who are not eligible for free school meals, may face “disproportionate” costs as a result.
Other proposals include:
- The loss of 40 jobs, though the council says this will be largely done through deleting vacancies and that it will seek to avoid compulsory redundancies;
- Closing the City Library at 2pm on Saturdays;
- Increasing most of the council’s fees and charges in line with inflation;
- A £4.6m saving from unspecified efforts to be “more efficient and agile at delivering services through continuous improvement”.
The council also hopes to reduce adult social care spending by £8.3 million through measures to help people become more independent and avoid needing to go into care homes, as well as reducing crisis support services to become “time limited and purposeful”.
Bosses also hope to save £3.3 million by reducing the amount spent on placements at privately-run children’s care homes.
Assuming agreement from the Labour cabinet next Tuesday, the proposals will be subject to a consultation which will run until 15 January.
City council leader Karen Kilgour, who survived a vote of no confidence this week, said: “The council faces some big financial challenges after many years of Government underfunding. Providing social care to adults and caring for children with special educational needs is placing councils up and down the country under severe financial pressure.
“More and more councils have either gone bust or declared themselves in financial stress. Thankfully, Newcastle is not one of them because we’ve faced up to the difficult decisions in the past.
“The new Government has made a good start by announcing more investment in health, schools, social housing, social care, and children with special educational needs but the council still faces some stark choices. I look forward to targeted multi-year funding settlements for local government in future, which should benefit councils like ours, however we still have significant savings to make next year.
“All of our proposals are designed to minimise the impact on our most vulnerable, but it won’t be easy. By putting residents at the heart of everything we do and working with partners I am confident we will balance the budget and continue to provide the kind of good quality services the people of Newcastle deserve.”
